


An Old Friend's Hand

by paradisecity



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, star war
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-26
Updated: 2005-08-26
Packaged: 2018-01-11 07:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradisecity/pseuds/paradisecity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Obi-Wan settles in to life on Tatooine, he gets just a touch of help from an unlikely source.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Old Friend's Hand

The first time Obi-Wan sees Quinlan on Tatooine, he’s twenty-five, caught up in the midst of events that will forever change the galaxy as he knows it, and is about to lose his beloved Master to a child who hadn’t even been alive as long as Obi-Wan’s been Qui-Gon’s apprentice. It is no wonder, then, that he’s not sure it really is Quinlan sees and feels. It is, in fact, something he won’t be sure of for a dozen years yet to come until he’s in transit from Rendili to Coruscant, about to turn over a friend and fellow Jedi to the Council on possible charges of treason –- a friend he’s always liked, always believed in, always trusted.  
  
When they part, Quin says only, "Thank you." Obi-Wan knows what for and says nothing in return.  
  
It is the last time they will ever speak.

\------

The second time Obi-Wan sees Quinlan on Tatooine, it is in Mos Eisley’s cantina. He is forty, tired and gray before his time, bearing the weight of a dying galaxy on his shoulders. The face he thinks he recognizes, the aura he thinks feels familiar in the Force, fills him with an emotion to hard forgotten it takes him long moments to recognize it as joy: joy that another has survived and joy that the other should be Qunlan.  
  
His fellow Jedi, his fellow survivor, his friend, tips his head and raises his glass in an acknowledgement so quick Obi-Wan can’t be sure it wasn’t imagined. Yet he understands.  
  
Obi-Wan has made a life as an eccentric hermit, a stranger from a strange land whose only contact with others are the sand people he is rumored to have fought but once; the Jawas with whom he trades; and the Skywalkers of the moisture farm, his nearest neighbors if a man such as he can be said to have such a thing. He forays into the city once a season for supplies and provisions and that one of his journeys coincides with the anniversary of the Jedi purge is easily enough overlooked; this far out on the Rim there is little stock in such distant sentimentalities.  
  
To embrace Quin, to speak to him, to even acknowledge him in return would draw attention to both of them, attention they can ill afford. For a moment Obi-Wan is tempted to reach out to him through the Force, but in a wretched hive of scum and villainy such as this, there are still those who might recognize the connection for what it is. They are risking enough by simply being together; both Obi-Wan’s mission and Quin’s life are far too important to place in even the least bit of danger. And, Obi-Wan reflects sadly, the time for using the Force in such a way has all but passed.  
  
Instead, he drinks from his stone tankard of Alderaanian ale, thinks of his brethren in the Order he has loved and lost, regrets achingly the one he loved best and failed most desperately, and repeats an ancient blessing for the dead Qui-Gon taught him so many years ago.  
  
Quinlan leaves before he does, in sad, lonely silence. Obi-Wan does not, cannot, watch him disappear into the clouds of unforgiving sand that wait slyly and patiently just beyond the cantina’s door. When Obi-Wan returns to his meager home, he watches the suns set, the moons wax and wane, and the suns rise again, greeting each of them with his tears.

\------

Obi-Wan does not expect to see Quinlan the following year. To think of their meeting as anything other than a gift from the Force far too exquisite to be repeated would be so ungrateful and unbefitting a Jedi so as to make him unworthy of the gift at all. And one thing he holds tightly to, even now, is his air of propriety and civility. Archaic even at the height of the Republic and all but unheard of on this outlaw’s planet, it is the final remnant of an old life to which he clings in comfort.  
  
It is with that in mind that he journeys to Mos Eisley and the cantina the following year. It does not occur to him to think any differently until he recognizes the last vestiges of a warrior’s body cleaving its way through the crowd as easily as it once cleaved its way through a swath of opponents with lightsaber held high.  
  
The time that has passed has made Quinlan, if not known, as least not unfamiliar to the establishment’s patrons as he easily becomes involved in a game of sabaac with two Rodians, a human male, and a Twi’lek female. It makes Obi-Wan wonder what it is Quin is doing now and what he himself would be doing if he didn’t have a mission of his own. He can’t imagine what it must be like to be a lost Jedi; though Quin may perhaps have more experience at it than most, Obi-Wan does not think that makes it easy.  
  
He sits with the solemnity afforded his libation and allows himself moments of mourning and grief he never allows himself at any time other than this. He speaks Qui-Gon’s ancient blessing and turns his thoughts to celebrating the lights and lives of his fallen comrades, sharing it all with his friend and brother as best he can without word or glance.  
  
He drinks until his ale is gone, half aware that Quinlan has been regularly throwing his hand in favor of the Twi’lek female, who will soon take from his next bet what must be nearly all the credits Quin has to his name.  
  
Obi-Wan watches the hand play out to its fated conclusion and then takes his leave. It is all he can do not to meet Quinlan’s gaze as he threads his way through the darkness to the light of the doorway, but he’s certain Quin already knows all he could read in Obi-Wan’s eyes.

\------

Wan as the landscape of the Force and his place within it. It is a stark contrast to the geography of the Force he knew not all that long ago, full of gentle hills and softly sloping valleys bathed in the light of faith. The distance of difference would be as a physical ache, but he does not allow himself to dwell on such things. Instead, he focuses on the simple tools and herbal remedies he sells in Anchorhead and Mos Eisley to provide for his spartan subsistence, trades with the Jawas, stays out of the way of the Tusken Raiders, and runs through Jedi tomes without text and katas without lightsaber to combat the fear he may one day forget them.  
  
Most importantly, he reaches out to Qui-Gon as Yoda taught him and offers Luke all the love he can no longer give Anakin. He is successful in neither pursuit: all his attempts to feel even the least of Qui-Gon’s presence are clear failures and he fares no better with the Skywalkers, who prefer he keep his influence at a distance too great for Luke to feel.  
  
Jedi do not feel despair, but Obi-Wan is as much a Jedi now as the Empire is the old Republic. In the dark years that follow, Obi-Wan allows himself all the mourning and pain accorded him – not for what has passed, but for what is to come. There is enough tragedy in the present and future that he need not look to the past.  
  
The only thing that keeps the darkness at the fringes is knowing he is not truly alone. That an old friend who once saw the light as he did can be with him now, even for a few short moments, is what Obi-Wan has come to rely on when his own grief stacks so high it eclipses both the desert’s suns.  
  
Quinlan represents something Obi-Wan has completely lost. His renegade’s presence in defiance of safety and wisdom and his rogue’s smile in disregard of the current state of affairs are, to Obi-Wan, nothing less than hope. It is a hope Obi-Wan needs in the same way he used to need the presence of the Force.

\------

When he is seven, Luke falls ill with Gavin’s fever. He has always been a slight boy, almost delicate, the sort of boy rarely seen in the Temple and even more rarely seen on a harsh world such as Tatooine. And while most children who contract the fever rid themselves of it as easily and quickly as they became afflicted, with Luke there is question.  
  
Obi-Wan alone holds vigil by his bedside, both by choice and necessity. Though Luke is just a boy, he does a man’s worth of work in a day and his illness is a setback the Skywalkers cannot afford in this lean year. They are all working doubly hard: Owen and Beru with seeded clouds to cull the season’s harvest, Obi-Wan with his remedies and tentative attempts at Force healing to make the boy well again. Is it nearly two standard weeks before the fever breaks and Obi-Wan can be sure Luke is truly well.  
  
It is in the midst of those two weeks that his season’s visit to Mos Eisley falls, the first he has missed since he landed on the planet’s barren surface years ago. It seems as though he was vaguely aware of the date as it passed, but his concern for the boy’s health overrode all else. As he journeys home on foot, greeting moons he hasn’t seen in many days, he spares a moment’s thought for Quinlan and the following year’s meeting.  
  
It is all Obi-Wan can afford Quinlan and for that he is sorry. Exhaustion overtakes him as soon as he reaches his door.

\------

The following year, though Obi-Wan waits longer than is strictly wise, Quinlan does not show.

Nor the next year.

Nor the year after that.

Nor the year following.

\-----

One of the many truths Obi-Wan is intimately acquainted with is that it is surprisingly easier to lie to oneself than it is to lie to others. Truth be told, Obi-Wan knows, despite the implacable calm and the endless patience with which he sits alone at the cantina, that Quinlan is not going to come. He has known this, in fact, for quite some time though he is loathe to allow himself this particular truth.  
  
His relationship with the Force is, at best, that of a spurned lover. He needs it at the same time he desperately wishes he didn’t, yearns for it at the price of his self-respect and self-reliance, and finds comfort in its betraying arms though he thinks he should know better. Yet in the midst of that maelstrom, he can feel a quiet void where Quinlan’s presence used to be, a small darkness where before there was light. He only wishes he knew how it happened, whether the year Luke took sick was his first absence or whether he sat patiently on the rough hewn stone waiting for someone who would never arrive, the way Obi-Wan is now. He wishes he’d had one last chance to fix his friend’s likeness in his memory to carry through the coming years until the Force grants him his own well-deserved leave. But mostly, he wishes he had been able to say goodbye, even if he hadn’t known that’s what he would be saying at the time.  
  
At the barback’s resentful glare, he acquiesces to a tankard of ale. When the serving girl sets it on the table and he reaches for it, he feels more than hears a warm rush of wind about him and he is surrounded by Quinlan: his wicked, reckless laugh; the boyhood smirk that turned into a man’s grin of danger; an upside down triumph high atop a distant waterfall; the careless ease with which he leaned in the doorway and said, "You’ve never done this before, have you, Kenobi?"; a simple word of thanks that meant more than mere words could say; a flood of nearly unsurprised admiration the preceded a trek across the galaxy to a lonely desert planet; years’ worth of silent meetings that brought a quiet and powerful joy.  
  
And after it all, Quin’s voice like a long lost lover with a simple prayer for the living, the brother blessing to Obi-Wan’s prayer for the dead.  
  
The psychometric imprint fades and the tankard cools in Obi-Wan’s hand. He takes the libation in honor of his friend’s memory and in gratitude for an underserved yet well-granted wish.  
  
When Obi-Wan leaves, he does not look back. He knows the next time he darkens the cantina’s doorway will be his last.

\------

The first time Obi-Wan speaks to Qui-Gon on Tatooine, he is fifty, wise and weathered in a way befitting a Jedi, in need and deserving of an old friend’s company, and six years away from a most well-earned rest.


End file.
